Yellow Musk Creeper

The creeper is a big, pale green climbing vine with ivy-shaped leaves, 2d6 orchid-like flowers and 1d4 deep green buds of bright yellow streaked with purple. A single bulbous root feeds growth covering up to 20 square feet, and while dormant it gives off a sweet, enticing fragrance.

Its zombies are man-sized humanoids with yellow skin and a vacant, glassy stare, still dressed in whatever they wore when captured. A new zombie has no special smell, but one nearing its end reeks of musk.

The plant rests until a creature comes within 10 feet. Then the nearest blooms swivel and puff musky pollen at the victim's face, requiring a normal attack roll. A victim who fails a save vs. spell walks entranced into the vine, fighting anyone who tries to stop him. A round later, dozens of roots fasten to his head and spend two rounds boring into his brain, and from then on 1-4 points of his Intelligence are eaten away every round.

Reduced to 1 or 2 Intelligence, he rises as the plant's zombie servant, and at 0 or below he dies. If the creeper dies first, Intelligence returns at 1 point per day, or all at once with heal. A zombie can be saved only after the parent plant is destroyed, with neutralize poison followed at once by heal, and it then needs four weeks of rest to recover fully.

A zombie keeps its hit points, armor and any weapon in hand but fights as a 2 Hit Die monster, loses Dexterity and Wisdom bonuses and cannot cast spells or use magic powers. It is not undead and cannot be turned.

Slashing, burning, freezing or anything else that harms a vine can cut the creeper back, but it regrows unless its root is hurt; only damage to the bulbous root just below the soil counts. Neither plant nor zombies can be affected by sleep, hold, charm, illusion or similar mental magic.

Creepers grow in underground soil or in deep, shadowy forests and jungles, climbing trees and stones like ivy, and are sometimes planted on purpose as guardians. Zombies can roam up to 100 feet from their plant.

It attacks anything bigger than a house cat but can make zombies only from man-sized humanoids, feeding on their bodies and the soil. Zombies bury bones and belongings near the root and spend their time dragging fresh victims, especially humanoids, to it. They do not eat; the seedling growing in each head sustains them. Its only natural foes are insects, disease and hunger.

One zombie can be controlled per two flowers. Each death makes a bud bloom and a new bud form. Roughly two months after its capture, a zombie strays 200 feet or more from the parent and collapses, and within an hour its seedling sprouts, blooms and feeds on the corpse, becoming a new creeper the size of the fallen body.